Monday, 12 December 2016

Two pilots in the summer of 1944 in France Bf 109 G-6/AS

..And a request from Dr. Jochen Prien for a blog reader to identify these two pilots seen during the summer of 1944 in France; may be these two men have been the subject of another thread somewhere else before - apparently on-one seems to know their identity.

We can see a Leutnant wearing a German Cross in Gold (DKiG) and an Oberfeldwebel decorated with an Iron Cross 1st Class. Does anybody know who these two pilots are ? The photos are part of a series of PK-photos taken in France now held by the Bundesarchiv. Several photos from this series showing a Bf 109 G-6/AS and a Bf 109 G-6/Bf 109 G-14 have been published many times over. But as far as I know they have so far eluded positive identification.

It is difficult to believe that no one out there would know at least the Leutnant with the DKiG as there were comparatively few Luftwaffe pilots of that calibre still around in France in the summer of 1944 - as Dick Clark states in his Normandy air war history ('Angels Eight'), "..there were the 'super aces' and then there were the rest.."

Looking at the other images from this BA-film is just as frustrating – there are a couple of photos showing a very dark Bf 109 G-6/AS almost II./JG 11 style with the fuselage Balkenkreuz and numeral almost completely over-sprayed, with our Leutnant sitting in the cockpit or on the cockpit sill in some of them, then you can see him in the cockpit of what looks like a freshly allocated Bf 109 G-6 or G-14 wearing the usual three-greys scheme and a white numeral, this a/c also shown from various angles. Click to view large

Then there are a number of images showing various Bf 109 G-6/14s taxiing on a large grass field, one a “black 2”, which offer no clue as to their unit. Many of the images from this Bundesarchiv series have appeared in various publications over the years with no positive unit identification, let alone a pilot name.
By way of elimination the only units that come to mind are II./JG 11 (because of the G-6/AS), I./JG 5 or possibly a recce-unit such as (F)/123 or NAG 13.

Over to you the reader - any information gratefully received at falkeeins at aol dot com